Walter Lovi

Father Walter Lovi (1796 – 1878) was a Roman Catholic priest and architect, active in Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century.

[3] He studied at Scots College in Rome, and at St Sulpice's seminary in Paris,[4] where he was ordained at the age of 26.

[3][7][8] Initially he found the local Protestant population unwilling to rent him a place that he could use to celebrate mass, but he was eventually given a choice of plots on which to build a church by the townsfolk in gratitude for his efforts in setting up a hospital and tending to the needs of the victims of a cholera outbreak in the town.

[3][7] He chose a site on Malcolm Street and, again working with William Robertson, built St Joachim's Church,[9] which opened in 1836 and is still in use as an active place of worship.

[3] Lovi left Wick soon after the church was built, and helped tend the sick in cholera outbreaks in various different parts of the country.